BUT
Groups of members of the US Congress have continued to speak out with courage: 1 Aug 2008; 3 Dec 2009; 25 Sept 2012.
SEE ALSO SECTION ON US POLICY ON THE BALTIC HOLOCAUST AND RELATED ISSUES
Efraim Zuroff, “The Threat of Baltic Ultra-Nationalism” in the Guardian, 3 April 2010.
Efraim Zuroff, “No Tolerance for False History” in the Jerusalem Post, 1 May 2010.
Marc Tracy, “Rosenthal Lays Off Lithuania” in Tablet, 3 May 2010.
Dovid Katz, “Why is the US Silent on ‘Double Genocide’?” in the Guardian, 21 December 2010.
First reports emerge on the US embassy’s promise of funding to the Summer Literary Seminars program in Vilnius on condition that Dr. Efraim Zuroff be dropped from the program, in Defending History, May 2011. Subsequent report on 10 March 2012.
Geoff Vasil, “A Conference for Tolerance Day” in Defending History, 17 November 2011.
Dovid Katz, “Hannah Rosenthal Does It Again” in the Algemeiner Journal, 25 November 2011.
US Embassy in Vilnius convenes the “camouflage symposium” (framed to honor T. Snyder’s book Bloodlands) to help Lithuanian government cover for concurrent reburial and glorification of 1941 Nazi puppet prime minister, 17 May 2012. Video. Open letter. Within days, one of the embassy’s invitees to the symposium told the local press that the reburial of the 1941 Nazi PM demonstrated the “ongoing drama” of Lithuanian history, while lashing out at “the Jews” for making people afraid (of publicly honoring Nazis?) of getting clobbered by the Jews “with a club.” When pressed by local media, the US ambassador gave a “balanced” statement on the glorification of the leading local Nazi collaborator.
Believe it or not: As the 1941 Nazi puppet prime minister’s remains were being repatriated from the US to Lithuania for reburial and glorification, the US embassy helped cover up the scandal with a symposium on the Lithuanian Holocaust, at which the ongoing reinterment saga was not even mentioned by the Lithuanian government compliant participants chosen to speak. Within days, one of them called the reburial of the fascist PM a testament to the “drama” of Lithuanian history. . .
[Jonathan Berger, US Embassy, Vilnius, statement issued to the press cited in] “Lithuanian President’s Decree on Historians’ Commission Highlights Differences Between Nazi and Soviet Crimes” in 15min.lt, 17 October 2012. The strange statement of uncritical American support for the revival of the “red-brown commission” flew in the face of pleas from groups of Holocaust survivors in the United States and in Israel, a public letter from the last group of Lithuanian Holocaust survivors in Israel to the director of Yad Vashem, and the commission’s lamentable record, which includes the resignations on principle by Dr. Yitzhak Arad, Sir Martin Gilbert (London), Prof. Gershon Greenberg (Washington, DC), Prof. Konrad Kwiet (Sydney) and Prof. Dov Levin (Jerusalem). To this day, the Commission’s website carries the text of the Prague Declaration presented as fact, in English and Lithuanian, and boasts of its role in the promotion of the Prague Declaration. The most recent in a long list of scandals concerns the protest by a Vilnius Holocaust survivor against inaccurate Commission statements that have yet to be corrected.
Dovid Katz, “Efraim Zuroff, History’s Lonely Defender” in The Times of Israel, 15 November 2012.